Social Media Marketing for Small Business. Not Connected? Three Reasons Why You Should Be
Social media marketing is an important tool in your business marketing strategy, and if you’re not connected you absolutely need to be. Here are three reasons why.
1. Your customers are talking about you.
Whether you are connected on Facebook or Twitter, etc., your customers are, and they are talking about your business. Why? Because for the first time ever, social media has leveled the playing field so that customers have a voice, and with that voice comes power.
Statistics show that an unhappy customer tells 11 people about their bad experience with a business. But that was before social media. I personally have over 5,000 followers on Twitter, and 600 friends on Facebook, not to mention hundreds of followers on other social networks. If I’m not happy with a business, I have the ability to get the word out to thousands of people!! Your business needs to be monitoring the social media environment to see what people are saying so that you can respond appropriately and quickly. Here are three of my favorite online tools that you can use to monitor what people are saying about your business: Google Alerts, Addictomatic, and TweetBeep.
2. Customers expect you to be engaged.
Notice I didn’t use the word want, but expect. Social media has become a new platform for customer service, and in order to deliver the best service possible, businesses must respond. If you don’t respond it is assumed you don’t care. And if you don’t care about your customers they won’t care about you. Get engaged.
3. Social media marketing enhances your visibility.
Ivan Misner, the founder of Business Networking International, (BNI) teaches that Visibility + Credibility = Profitability. With over 100 million users of Facebook in the US it’s easy to see why you could be missing out on a huge opportunity for visibility. On top of that, social media results are now indexed by Google, Bing, and Yahoo, which means that your Twitter messages (and your company profile) have a high probability of appearing at the top of Google for specific keyword searches. Get your business on social media so you can get found.
February 22nd, 2010 at 2:35 am
Agreed on all points. Your article clearly outlines the benefits of social media marketing - especially the first one - “your customers are talking about you” - whether or not you are engaged. So it is certainly better to take a proactive approach than a reactive approach and it is also better to know what is being said about your brand. “Customers expect you to be engaged” is indicative of the new type of consumer of today. Consumers are no longer interested in being preached at. They demand two-way communication channels and engagement and expect brands to “prove” their value - not just talk about it. Thanks for sharing
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:45 am
Many companies didn’t see the benefit of working the social media sites until the search engines started indexing them. Now there really is no reason NOT to have social media as part of your marketing strategy.
Great post. Very concise and to the point.
February 22nd, 2010 at 9:48 am
Thank you for your insightful and valuable comments!!
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Great points Wendy!
I particularly agree with point #2 - that customers have come to expect to be engaged.
If I see a business that isn’t online/involved in social media yet, I’m okay with that. I don’t know what they’re waiting for, but I’m not going to fault them just yet. I can be a little intimidating.
But a business that is on twitter or facebook or whatever other platform they’re using, well then, they need to use it in a way that engages and contributes, otherwise it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
It’s interesting how the consumer expectation is continuing to change and evolve as social media and connectivity increase.
Thanks for the post.
Looking forward to more!
March 4th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Excellent article! Thank you for including the online tools that you can use to monitor what people are saying about your business. I wasn’t aware of the last two that you mention, but will definitely use these, as I’m in the process of starting up a small sustainability consulting firm.
Another thing that I’m excited about and expect to find useful is a start-up “boot camp” that a couple of my business school colleagues are putting on. This boot camp will include best practices from a social networking expert, as well as legal advice on the questions everyone has when starting up: NDAs, contracts, boilerplates, etc.
Their website is at http://gosustainably.com/i2i for anyone interested in checking it out.
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:16 pm
i have tried social media marketing for getting our new products to be known on the market. it seems to work well specially if the audience is targeted ‘
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:11 am
I found this new, TOTALLY FREE (like myspace and facebook) social network. It lets you do everything from 1 page, including managing any other social sites you may already have subscribed to. People String is awesome, I use it for everything. http://www.peoplestring.com/?u=mhbusiness
December 14th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Hi,
Great blog about peoplestring. I was a member since pre-launch and did very well recuiting members.
I have come accross another one called zingsocial.co
You should check it out its in pre launch till 15th of january and the alexa rank for it is exploding.
You can get in at the top and i promise you will love it.
Please have a look- http://www.zingsocial.co
Thanks.
April 5th, 2012 at 10:20 pm
Good day! I could have sworn I’ve been to this blog before but after looking at some of the articles I realized it’s new to me. Nonetheless, I’m definitely delighted I stumbled upon it and I’ll be bookmarking it and checking back frequently!